Val Lewton never had to be ‘discovered,’ actually. Life magazine awarded him his own photo layout and the critics praised him as the maker of a new brand of psychologically based horror films. One of the first to write about the horror film genre in scholarly terms was avant-garde filmmaker Curtis Harrington, who emulated Lewton in his experimental pictures as well as commercial efforts, like Night Tide. Lewton’s collaborators consciously tried to recapture his style, in their later pictures Night/Curse of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur), The Haunting (Robert Wise) and Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (Mark Robson). Criterion now takes a crack at the Lewton ethos with 1942’s Cat People, and it couldn’t happen soon enough for this reviewer.
The story in a nutshell: Val Lewton landed his B-Unit deal at RKO and hit the ground running. Part of his success must be attributed to a clear mission statement from above. With the purging of Orson Welles from the lot (“Showmanship, not genius!”) Lewton was ordered to turn out inexpensive horror films that would do well at the box office and offset the losses of costly artistic movies. He was handed infuriatingly trashy ready-made titles that were sort of a blessing in disguise — who could blame him if a movie called Cat People wasn’t a huge hit? If it did at all well, it would be considered a triumph.
Cat People became a triumphant hit. It secured Lewton’s producership and allowed him to build his own little department of filmmakers specializing in civilized horrors. Sitting out the war, editors Robert Wise and Mark Robson quickly realized that the creative buzz around Lewton could become a career booster. The Lewton unit would also become a springboard for a supremely talented previous associate of Lewton, the then- obscure director Jacques Tourneur.
A bona-fide classic and a screen original, Cat People defines the Lewton approach. It bases its terror less in supernatural monsters than in psychological problems. The De Witt Bodeen screenplay (reportedly heavily re-written by Lewton, as were all of his films) presents convincing characters in ordinary adult situations, and then sneaks the supernatural content in through the side door. Lewton’s sources of terror would often be related to sexual problems compounded by negative emotions, like jealousy.
New York is a lonely town for Serbian émigré Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), until she falls in love with ship designer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). But Irena has a strange problem – she balks at consummating her marriage for fear that she is descended from a line of satanic cat people: If sexually aroused, she’ll transform into a deadly leopard. Oliver indulges Irena’s problem and sends her to a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd (Tom Conway). Yet his affections drift to his friendly co-worker Alice Moore (Jane Randolph). Already susceptible to psychosis, Irena’s jealous instincts bring on the curse she hoped to suppress.
Author Joel E. Siegel nailed why Cat People connects with audiences more deeply than a typical ’40s horror picture like, say, Universal’s The Mummy’s Ghost. Lewton’s people live in the real world, holding down jobs and making plans for the future. There are no mad scientists or foreign mountebanks with reanimated corpses in their cabinets. If someone feels the influence of the occult or a hereditary curse, they themselves are in doubt about it. A ‘business as usual’ mood predominates. People get tired or out of sorts. Leading characters don’t have pals to provide comic relief. Romantic leads aren’t ‘perfect people.’ This movie’s handsome and outwardly sensitive Ollie Reed turns out to be a thoughtless clod.
UnreCATcilable Differences.
Cat People gave 1942 audiences a lot to think about — genre movies at that time just didn’t dig deeply into the mundane sexual problems of ordinary people. Irena Dubrovna’s issues can’t be helped by marriage to a patient nice guy. Oliver is tolerant but incapable of understanding Irena or interpreting her pleas and moods. He violates her confidence by discussing the problem with another woman, something Irena takes very personally. Things matter in marriage, and a betrayal of trust between partners is nearly impossible to repair. Irena crouches on one side of a door hoping for a sign that Oliver can overcome her fear. As in real relationships, it’s a case of bad timing and missed cues. When Irena tries to give the marriage an honest try, Oliver has already made up his mind that it’s a bust. The story’s feline curse seems almost beside the point: relationships are tough for most everyone.
Many horror critics point out the fact that Tourneur and Lewton wanted to keep the whole cat transformation business ambiguous, an idea the front office would never accept. The leopard is easily seen in the shadows of the drafting room and the fur-covered corpse at the end (Oliver and Alice just walk away and leave her there!) looks suspiciously like a dead panther. But the show is unambiguous about the existence of Cat People. Without a real cat curse there is no explanation for Elizabeth Russell’s creepy scene (“Moi-ra sestra?”), unless both cat women are neurotics from a similar background. The balance between the rational and the supernatural and how much of the threat needs to be shown are always debatable, as can be seen in Tourneur’s triumphant return to the Lewton style fifteen years later in Night of the Demon.
(spoilers)
Much is made of Lewton’s own reported cat phobia, but the feline menace is undercut by amusing catlike details seen in artwork, décor, etc. The real scares in Cat People come from unnerving little lapses of personal security, the kind everyone experiences — the feeling of being followed or watched, or of something being ‘not right.’ Lewton likes to put his characters in vulnerable positions, as when Alice feels trapped in her apartment building’s basement pool. And there is of course the nighttime walk with its famous ‘bus’ moment. It’s curious that few people object that Irena’s muddy paw prints magically transform into high heel prints on the sidewalk. As does Dracula in some pictures, she apparently can change physical form and still retain her clothing.
‘Forties thrillers and films noir discovered Freud in a big way, and Cat People is one of the earliest pictures to feature an unscrupulous psychiatrist. Dr. Judd’s oily smooth-talker indicates his desire for Irena by saying things like, “What does one tell a husband? One tells him nothing.” He’s a pretty lousy psychiatrist, interpreting Irena’s non-reactions as a veiled come-on. Audiences surely responded positively when Irena takes the opportunity to exercise her bestial imperative on such an appropriate target – Tom Conway’s voice always reminded this viewer of the slick city wolf in the Tex Avery cartoons.
Tourneur and Lewton retain the mystery throughout, never allowing Irena to shake her curse of isolation and sadness. Oliver and Alice sympathize but in the end lock her out for not fitting in well enough with conventional social normality. In this case, poor Irena slips back to her defiant Wild Side. And audiences understand when she secretly revels in her feral power, even if they make sexist connections between women and animal instincts. Tourneur doesn’t need to show a makeup transformation. Linwood Dunn applied an optical filter and eye glints to Irena’s close-up for her on-screen transformation, a great moment for Lewton’s brand of subtlety. To know what was happening to Irena, Jack Pierce makeup effects were not necessary. ( top, large image)
